Formal Research Paper

PEPFAR: LOBBYING OUT THE PROMISE
In 2003, President Bush and congress passed an initiative to curtail and eventually stop the spread of HIV/AIDs around the world. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDs Relief, better known by its acronym PEPFAR, is not only the largest program in the world attempting to bring relief to people affected by HIV/AIDs, but also the largest offensive in the history of mankind against a disease. In light of America’s recent decrease in global popularity, PEPFAR is received by the world as one of the few shining examples of American’s determined compassion, a lingering shadow of what America once offered to the world. This paper will illuminate what lurks in the shadows today: the pharmaceutical lobby’s manipulated mutations of US trade and foreign aid policy and how dangerous the idea of intellectual property as property has become.
In order to understand what is wrong we need to understand the problems and how the US is broadly attempting to solve them (specificity). Due to the exponentially growing spread of HIV/AIDs around the world, President Bush, the Evangelical community, Congress, and many other Americans worked diligently to formulate and pass a HIV/AIDs treatment program and appropriate $15 billion dollars over five years to carry out America’s part in reaching the newly agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One MDG was to have universal access to AIDs treatment by 2010. PEPFARs contribution has prevented over 200,000 infant infections, supported antiretroviral treatment for over one million people, and successfully implemented a wide range of social education and other preventative programs across 13 nations of sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia: the areas hardest hit by AIDs. These gains are numerically greater than even the gains made by the global fund against HIV/AIDs.
Antiretroviral treatment works almost as a temporary cure for HIV/AIDs by slowing the progression of HIV to full blown AIDs, decreasing the viral load in patients, boosting the immune system, and thus restoring strength. Decreasing viral load is of special significance because it significantly reduces the chance that HIV/AIDs will be spread through sexual contact. But it is the increase in CD4+ T cells, which for practical purposes can be considered white blood cells, that builds strength and slows progression of the disease (Chen, Hoy and Lewin). Africans are proven to adhere to the treatment regimen more than anyone else in the world which helps lengthen the time before they require second line medication. Nonetheless, the benefits of first line treatments are rarely indefinite (Outterson 32).
PEPFARs success arguably comes from both treatment and prevention, but the extent of the population receiving treatment is the only measurable means of evaluating the program. The treatment relies almost entirely on the administration of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). These drugs allow AIDS sufferers to live fuller, longer lives, often by extending their lives by 20 to 30 years and restoring their strength to allow them to be productive members of society. This affects both those in a country who actually have the disease and those who do not. In the hardest hit countries, one does not say “he or she has AIDs” one says “we have AIDs.” Three of the professions hardest hit by AIDs are the military, healthcare workers, and teachers. One can imagine the social and economic magnitude as well as the regional instability created by AIDs as healthcare systems with poor infrastructure further collapse, limited education systems become unreliable, and weak militaries and social control create chaos (Singer). Enabling these and other professionals to live through the prime of their working life strengthens the country. Countries which have been devastated by HIV/AIDs pandemics often have additional burdens to handle as well, which are equally affected by patent law. In order to overcome these strains a country must have some of its foundational needs, such as public health, built up so that it can move forward by itself.
Basic understanding of key elements of the trade discussion must also be understood. Intellectual property rights in this frame of reference refers to the rights of a pharmaceutical company to have drug(s), and any chemical entity it invents, protected by law from being reproduced or copied for 20 years. This means that the company has sole rights over any newly discovered medication, its distribution, profits, and “trade secrets” and that both sovereign and international bodies may take action against any violators. Any country that is bidding to join or joins the World Trade Organization (WTO) must abide by these rules. Any generic manufacturer that unlawfully reproduces these drugs, as well as the country that harbors the company and the country that receives those drugs may have legal action taken against them by the country and company in which the patent is based. These WTO rules are largely based on TRIPS, which stands for the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which was negotiated in 1994 to internationalize intellectual property rights and regulation (Braithwaite and Drahos). Its many facets and the United States’ dominance in shaping the agreement are of upmost importance to this paper.
It is US policy to deny the use of generic HIV/AIDs medication in countries even in countries where they are fundamentally necessary. US trade policy has routinely blocked trade negotiations in the WTO that attempted to create exceptions for life saving drug provision in countries that cannot afford them. US trade negotiators blocked a WTO agreement at the second round of Doha talks that would have increased access to generic medicines in poor countries. The US did compromise on several symbolically significant principles, but intermittently the US added extra measures which made the symbolic concessions an incomplete and thus completely ineffective solution to the problem. One concession made application for registration of a generic medication by a generic manufacturer possible before a patent’s term of protection ended, but at the same time precluded registration for marketing until after expiration of the patent and required notification of the application to the patent holder. Together, these two details effectively deny the possibility of the much smaller generic manufacturer going into production because of the extensive cost, loss of margins, and mounting legal troubles they will face (Baker 14). The larger problem with current TRIPS policy is that most adapted formulas of first line ARVs and second line ARVs were created post TRIPS and so are subject to these intellectual property laws. This means there is more than a decade’s time before most of these drugs can be reproduced and subsequent advances like fixed dose combinations (FDCs) and second or third line treatments are even farther from being eligible for reproduction (Palitzka).
In recognition of the debate between less developed countries’ needs for essential medicines and protection for developed countries’ and large businesses’ investments in pharmaceutical research, all WTO nations came together to compromise between access and investment protection in the Doha Declaration. Compulsory licensing was created to allow domestic production and distribution of medication in countries where there was an essential need. Essential need was loosely defined as having a large percentage of the population afflicted by the disease and a majority of those individuals being unable to afford treatment. While compulsory licensing was a promising initial step toward reaching an all encompassing legal precedence for world trade issues experiencing similar debates, the compromise failed because of its complexity. The legal mechanisms for integrating compulsory license into national law are so costly and cumbersome bureaucratically and legally that attempts at implementation were shown to be substantially difficult enough to become a barrier (Mullen). But even the simple threat of trade reprisals from countries with large economies is enough to prevent some nations from utilizing compulsory licensing (Calmy).
In addition to these complications, the US and the European nations were acting to undermine any gains that could be made by the declaration by signing bilateral trade agreements. This was an intentional partitioning of the world in times when a holistic approach was known to be the best method for success. “At the same time… [the US and Europe] were independently engaging in negotiations to bind several developing countries to even higher levels of protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) via bilateral agreements” (Bagely 17). What came to be known by critics as the TRIPS plus agreement effects 23 developing countries with the ability to produce generics and as a result of blocked exports, up to 150 developing countries in need of affordable essential medication for anything from AIDs to Tuberculosis are forced to rely on the black market for medication (Bagley 17).
Another important policy block strategically added by the US and European countries under the influence of Big Pharma dealt with parallel importation. Parallel importation effectively became illegal, as it became legal to subject exporting countries to sanctions within the WTO for violating TRIPS. This policy directly effects PEPFARs efforts because of PEPFAR’s reliance on a distribution system similar to parallel importation. Parallel importation occurs when one WTO member country produces the generic medication themselves and then exports to a country that lacks the ability to produce the drugs autonomously. Previously a country could act under compulsory licensing to provide affordable medication to a country where those drugs were unavailable and essential to national health. This loophole was closed, and so PEPFAR could not purchase generic medication, though the US’s previous lack of utilization of this loophole suggests it would not have attempted parallel importation in the future. What this change in WTO trade policy did do, however, was to shut down any possible alternative country from working towards this goal under parallel importation. This means untold foreign national assistance programs and private based humanitarian programs were deterred (Bagley 17).
There is significant evidence to support the theory that there is a causal alignment between Big Pharma and US policy. The first is President Bush’s selection of Randall Tobias, recently the president and CEO of Eli Lilly, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the US, to head PEPFAR. PEPFAR has many more facets to it that are non-pharmaceutical than are pharmaceutical, so this appointment is suggestive to say the least. Perhaps greater evidence is the no less coincidental aggressiveness of the US to maintain global trade policies that favor Big Pharma. A prominent example is when the South African government attempted to utilize an article of TRIPS and legally allow compulsory licensing of AIDs drugs and it was not only sued by 42 pharmaceutical companies, but lost its “most favored nation” trade status with the US and was put under immense pressure on all trade fronts by US trade representatives (Bagley 17). Furthermore, during redefining TRIPS discussions, it was explicitly outlined that member state could create “more extensive protection programs” as long as the fell in line with TRIPS policies. This is a legal tool also utilized by the US to justify its aggressiveness (Bagley 17).
Additional evidence of a pharmaceutical link is shown by US attempts to block access of countries to quality generics on the international market. Generic competition in the global market is the key determinant of ARV prices. Historically, the price of ARVs only became even remotely affordable after generic versions entered the market, creating competition. In fact, Constance Marie Meiners of the University of Brasilia says, “generic competition is a key determinant of ARV price decreases” (Palitzka). This is why pressuring major generic producing countries such as India and Brazil out of the market by blocking their entry into the WTO is so detrimental to poor nations with national health problems. Overall, for countries such as India, joining the WTO has many more benefits to its own people than continuing production. This is why as of 2008 India will no longer allow production of generic drugs including ARVs, cutting off the biggest supplier of ARVs to the developing world (Bateganya).
US trade policy on intellectual property rights is at the very least preferential. Intellectual property rights go so far as to not only treat the product as property, but to also treat the “trade secrets” associated with them as property. Trade secrets would include such important information such a bioequivalence data. This is the weapon of “data-exclusivity”. This is a secret weapon of the pharmaceutical companies in Washington. Without the data, generic companies have to “duplicate time-consuming, expensive and ultimately unethical and wasteful clinical trials. Since it would not make sense to do so for time reasons alone -- clinical trials ordinarily take 6-8 years to complete -- data exclusivity spells a death knell to an effective import/export compulsory license scheme” (Baker 14). With US trade policy slanted toward big business and against public health and prosperity, it is not hard to make the same conclusions about US foreign assistance policy by studying the derived policies of PEPFAR.
Internal US policy regarding PEPFAR is perhaps the most directly flawed in terms of lost opportunities because while a shift in holistic US trade policy would set a precedence, a minor shift for one program in foreign assistance that only has the potential to under cut the pharmaceutical industries revenues by 1-2% would be viewed as an exception and would likely go largely unnoticed (Bateganya).The US refuses to purchase or supply drugs that have not been approved by the FDA. Until 2005, this effectively blocked all generic medication from being eligible for PEPFAR use. Only then did the government create an FDA expedited approval process. But this process is not quick and is certainly slow enough to be nearly ineffective (Baker 14). The slow pace of the duplicative scientific review, the time it takes for data to become un-exclusive, and the volume of legal issues and documentation all make this process outside the means of the majority of generic manufacturers. Since most existing generic manufacturers are based in countries outside the WTO, they would have to honor US patent law in order to be considered for FDA approval (Brown). In addition, by agreeing to receive drugs and assistance from the US through PEPFAR, benefiting countries are restricted from buying drugs unapproved by the US. Since there are very few generic manufacturers that make ARVs based in the US, very few have procedures that are carried out to verify their product with the US. Those countries which sign on to PEPFAR are left with a choice: choose Big Pharma or rely on their own health care systems and the black market (Ismail). Finally, working in tandem with the previous requirement, is another bureaucratic barrier that drugs used by PEPFAR be registered (not for safety, but for legality) in recipient countries. Again, this intentionally blocks out generic manufacturers because it is unaffordable for them to risk pursuing such small markets (PEPFAR).
What the US could have done is relied on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Prequalification Process to ensure the safety and efficacy of medicines. This is the international equivalent of the FDA with almost the exact same procedures (Bartlett and Muro). In fact, because WHO standards and procedures were specifically created in consideration of resource poor settings, they might even be advantageous (Institute of Medicine). Its approval process uses volunteer representatives of drug regulatory bodies from France, Switzerland, and Germany and it is on this that the majority of nations around the world and such prominent humanitarian organizations such as the Catholic Relief Services and Doctors Without Borders rely (Cohen Schiff). With one mistaken approval by the WHO prequalification process in their history as compared to the FDA’s more recent mistaken and corrupt approval of Vioxx, it is unreasonable to suggest one regulatory body is safer than the other. A switch to WHO prequalification is advocated by The HIV Medicine Association , the Infectious Disease Society of America, the UN, the Kaiser network, the National Academies, the World Bank, and countless human rights organizations and governments around the world (Sengwana).
Perhaps the most important impact of this FDA only policy, more important than the sheer number of people who could have been treated but were not, is the lack of sustainability this creates in the global fight against AIDs. In this global financial crisis and in a part of the world where instability can upset systems and scare off donors, it is important to consider what might happen if PEPFAR was eliminated. Steve Gloyd, of the University of Washington said, “It is hard to simplify [an AIDS treatment system] when the Americans say: Let's do it with different drugs and a separate procurement system," (Brown). PEPFAR’s central tenet of sustainability is harmonization. “The central tenet of harmonization is that sustainable gains against the AIDS pandemic require that each country own and lead its response to its epidemic. The role of donors is to support and participate in three country-determined elements critical to an effective response—one national AIDS plan, one national AIDS coordinating mechanism, and one national AIDS monitoring and evaluation framework” (Institute of Medicine). US reliance on the FDA undermines the global effort and has been found to be the number one impediment to a sustainable increase in the number of people receiving ARV treatment. It is the greatest obstacle to coordination and harmonization on all levels of the effort both globally and locally (Institute of Medicine). Disregarding local supply management and drug regulation (most recipient countries prefer WHO standards and are not in the WTO) damages national health systems, especially the pharmaceutical sections. It creates a multi-drug distribution system which increases the work load on overstretched health workers and increases the risk for resistance to build up in patients. It wastes money that could be spent developing international support for ARV treatment increases, and it directly undermines non-US AIDs initiatives (“A Statement…”).
These policies, if continued, have dire consequences for the future of HIV/AIDs victims. This means that the newest AIDs medicines, which can have the greatest impact on the disease, are almost entirely precluded from receiving approval by the US for use in sponsored humanitarian programs. This excludes such important new drugs as (FDCs). FDCs make treatment significantly easier for patients and health workers by combining stronger medicine of equal dosage into a so-called AIDs cocktail that can be taken once a day (Baker 14). This is advantageous because ARVs normally need to be taken three times a day for life, which presents increased risk to the patients to develop resistance through lack of adherence to the drug regimen (Cohen and Schiff). In addition to this possible route to resistance, Brazilian studies have found that on principle, the lower availability of ARVs causes the higher the propensity for misuse, and thus, increased resistance and mutation of the virus (Teixiera). Resistance is what causes first-line treatments to become ineffective and the patient to either lose the benefits of ARVs or change to different drugs such as second lines.
Even more dangerous is the risk that US assistance and trade policy pose to the future fight against AIDs. Noting that there has been a successful major scale-up of treatment programs in resource poor settings, there needs to be deeper analysis on what this means for the fight against HIV/AIDs. In addition to fixed dose combinations, second line therapy drugs needed to sustain the positive effects of the first line ARVs are needed in ever growing amounts due to resistance, intolerance, and an ever increasing number of surviving patients (Global). This means an increasing proportion of assistance budgets will be directed toward more expensive second line drugs and less money will be available to start or continue first line therapies. The US and other assisting nations have to prepare now for the dramatic increase in treatment program cost and complexity and the collapse of health systems as a result of these poor policies (Morrison and Moore). Ensuring access to these drugs which will become essential in the coming years “…can only be achieved through firm political commitment to removing intellectual property barriers that stand in the way of generic competition” (“Too Little…”).
There are major changes needed in US and to a lesser extent global policy concerning intellectual property rights and foreign assistance. It is, however, important to remember that although action can be taken today, the damage done can never be erased. PEPFAR grantees are already locked into contracts, supply chains, bilateral agreements, and procurement systems with the currently less affordable Big Pharma medication. In addition, large portions of the generic industry have already been shut down and would take years to restart manufacturing (Baker 14). The time lost means an even greater number of people are infected and newer essential medication is even further away from being ready for generic production on a large scale. Most importantly, when the US and the world made a promise to end the suffering of AIDs victims and then defaulted, people and hope that should not have died did. Without US leadership in reversing policies and re-establishing a global paradigm, the US is effectively stimulating the environment that exponentially spreads this catastrophe around the globe (Fidler 99). It is imperative to the lives of millions around the world that the US government and its citizens take a closer look at the level and effects of the pharmaceutical lobby on non-domestic health policy, and if there is a wrong to be found the voices of a freely compassionate nation should demand that their promise be kept and that lobbying no longer extinguish hope.
 
Works Cited
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Bagley, Margo. "AN INTERDISCIPLINARY FORUM ON THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL PATENT & TRADE AGREEMENTS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST HIV & AIDS: LEGAL MOVEMENTS IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: TRIPS, UNILATERAL ACTION, BILATERAL AGREEMENTS, AND HIV/AIDS." Emory International Law Review Summer(2003): 17.

Baker, Brook K. "ARTHRITIC FLEXIBILITIES FOR ACCESSING MEDICINES: ANALYSIS OF TWO ACTION REGARDING PARAGRAPH 6 OF THE DOHA DECLARATION ON THE TRIPS AGREEMENT AND PUBLIC HEALTH." Indiana International & Comparative Law Review 613(2004): 14.

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Braithwaite and Drahos, Global Business Regulation, Cambridge University Press, 2000
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Cohen, Mardge and Gordon Schiff. Ban on generic AIDS drugs will prove to be fatal mistake." Chicago Sun Times 5 May 2004: 63.

Fidler, David P. "Fighting the Axis of Illness: HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Policy." The Harvard Environmental Law Review Spring(2004): 99.

“Global: WHO narrows down second line ARV options." 7 February 2008. United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network. 7 Dec 2008 .

Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Committee For The Evaluation Of The President's Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (Pepfar). PEPFAR Implementation: Progress and Promise. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2007. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11905&page=R1

Ismail, Asif. "PEPFAR Policy Hinders Treatment in Generic Terms." Center for Public Integrity 7 Dec 2008 .

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Creative Writing Interview

Safari Man

The reason I am writing about Safari Man is because he’s interesting and I’m an asshole, even though I fancy myself a nice asshole. I admit it; I’ve made fun of him a good amount. But at least I make fun of him when he isn’t around (supposedly that’s not a good thing). I always get a little bit of a rush too because he is so darn sneaky; you never know when your fun might turn in to something bad. You can tell just by lookin’ at him that he isn’t normal, and if you look closer it’s even more obvious that the kid’s just down right weird. But I’ve slowly started to make fun of Marcus Alexander Warriner (born May 3, 1990—got to get the boring stuff out of the way) less and less, and luckily this has been a great excuse to get to know him. It’s been insightful. It’s given me some more time to think about the way I act and my assumptions about people. But I think most of all I may have made a friend, though it’s not like any other I have or have ever had. I imagine someone reading this would ask why I wanted to do this since everyone else does. I don’t know. It just popped into my head. They say why. I say, “I don’t know man. He’s fascinating. He’s crazy.”


Basics Observations

Marcus is very soft spoken. If you can picture Garth from Wayne’s world with his pursed lips and timidly short sentences, that’s him. If you can recall Garth’s voice, that’s him too. Every word is passive and if it were not for the ridiculous things going on in his head which just pop out, each word could instantaneously blow right by you like the wind. He’s a very shy. But not in the classical sense of the person who is uneasy with people. He’s very easy-going. But he doesn’t seek out the attention of others, treating other people as alien things not as perhaps we would find ourselves among aliens, but as an alien who is quietly observing humans would. Apparently this is the way of modern Quakers.

However as soft spoken as he is, if he were a color and Jewell were a painting he would be a very loud color, because pretty much everyone here knows who Safari man is. Within a few days of being here, the kid with no name had earned the title “safari man” for his elaborate character. For the first few weeks he wore a pith helmet and brightly colored pipe cleaners on his glasses (which I thought were antennae originally, but later found out were eye brows). His clothing is very make-shift. He wears stuff the rest of us buy for fun at thrift stores. He looks like one of the environmentalist hackers from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, or Ringo (the long haired blond Lone Gunmen from X-files), or the bug catcher from Pokémon Yellow for Game Boy, or as I said, Garth. He wears sandals with socks and sandals with this and sandals with that and sandals in other unfashionable ways that I hadn’t thought about before. He mostly wears cargo shorts (which due to his gangly frame are shorter than they should be) and a Hawaiian shirt, though he occasionally busts out some very hip silver disco pants. He has long blond hair which is loosely kept together by a tie at the bottom of his neck. He’s a goofball if I’ve ever seen one.

Marcus has some habits that assert his strange place in the world too. For one, Marcus makes weird noises. Similar to bat noises, but deeper. Nazgul. That’s what they sound like. He sounds like a Nazgul. They’re evil soundin’ either way. He goes up and down the halls just makin’ these sounds like they aren’t annoying or loud. Marcus smells bad. Really bad, and it’s a stench that lingers. He is sneaky. He doesn’t laugh at the same things normal people laugh at. And he is so introverted.
Marcus is a crappy interviewee. Most of his responses go something like, “Oh…I don’t know…. I guess so,” and it is really difficult to make him go deeper unless he naturally would. At the same time though, he is the best interview because I just laugh about it for hours. When I asked Marcus where he was born he said Denver, Colorado, “…in a city hospital…. It was a while ago…. I don’t remember which one.” Not that these ellipses mean there is stuff in between. I’m just trying to convey the long drawn out pauses. He was raised by his parents Chuck and Liz, who I guess love him, but he wouldn’t really say. Not that this was a sore point. My emotion meter was just reading zero at the time. His dad is very similar to my dad. He buys stuff cheap on the internet, and then resells it on sites like eBay and Craigslist for a profit. According to Marcus most of the business is music equipment, “painfully loud speakers”, and war models. All of this is done from the home which is filled to the bursting point with packages and things. He finds the lack of room, “quite irksome.” I can sympathize. When I asked him what his mom does, he said she gardens and packs things, but mostly gardens. She also sews sometimes. Marcus wishes she would sew more. When I asked him if he meant for himself, he said “no not really” (a common phrase of his, which notes how polite but often misunderstood he is even to me still). Apparently she “repairs” clothes for extra income. I got the sense by what he said that behind his complete lack of emotion (except when he got flustered by his mom’s lack of sewing) he loves his parents deeply and has a certain affection for home, but seemed to get frustrated a few times during this series of questions. Maybe it’s because of my background, but I thought it might be because he felt poor. Having more money was later confirmed to be something that “would be nice……………..” He has no idea where his parents met, but suspects they met at a rock concert. Apparently his dad used to go to concerts and sell guitars to the visiting bands. His dad (you could tell he wanted to call him names) makes him move stuff around the house. There is some tension in the Warriner family. Marcus let me know both Grandpa’s had died of cancer, his dad’s mom won’t talk to the family because of some fight where she ended up throwing all of his dad’s old comic books away. He doesn’t seem sad, but I guess he was maybe slightly embarrassed. His mom’s grandma lives very near and “…she’s pretty cool. [He] likes talking to her.”



The Second Look

The second time I interviewed Marcus we were not very productive. He spent the whole time talking about zombies (ok duh, it was most of the time. I’m just elaborating), which was my mistake. I should’ve noticed all the zombie signs on his room door (and apparently on his window, though no one can read them), especially the one that says “Zombies Are Awesome”. When I entered his room he was watching The Matrix. I asked him if he watched this movie often with a little sneer poking through my serious interviewer mask. He said he doesn’t remember the movies he watches…. Brushing this answer aside I asked him some other questions about movies. He likes Sci-Fi’s, and recommended the Tremor series to me (it’s about giant worms. It’s actually pretty enjoyable if you view it as a mockery of old bad Sci-Fi’s). This made him jump to zombies. He became very much like a soothsayer here. He has some things for us to remember.
1. We have to be ready for the Zombie Apocalypse. Zombies take over the Earth, etc.
2. The Zombie Apocalypse is a much better alternative than Nuclear Armageddon.
3. This is because with his advice and our superior human intellect we can escape the Zombies and live on. Simply follow these directions for survival. If you see a Zombie, walk quickly (oddly running wasn’t recommended and stuck in the moment I forgot to ask why) and if you can, find a ladder and climb it because Zombies can’t do that.

I tried to get some sort of idea about how serious he was being. Turns out he is just being logical and practical. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, zombies or aliens. What he does believe is that in all practicality other biological life in the universe intelligent or not, probably exists. And he is convinced that at some point some scientist is going to mess up and POOF! Zombies. Dee ner neeeeee. Neeeener neeeener duh-nuh. Mwahahahahahaha. He did this, not me.

Marcus is someone who is very focused on certain things, which in turn make him really unfocused in everything else. For example, when he would run cross country races, he had no problem just stopping in the middle when he got tired for a break. But, he really likes insects and plant life. Behind Eaton you can see him patrolling the bushes picking out what he said are natural fruits that he knows are safe but often bitter to eat. He will repeatedly eat the same thing that makes him cringe just to see if it will taste good this time. His whole life is an experiment, but he knows the rules… I assume. He is proudly an eagle scout (spending 2 minutes trying to figure out the exact date he became one) so that has to mean something. I have great respect for that. If scouting hadn’t been so lame, or I guess if the people who had stuck with scouting hadn’t been so lame I would’ve wanted to be an eagle scout like my uncles. I guess I like the outdoors, but not that much. His mom got him started a long time ago. He says cub scouting was ok. “I like camping.”
It’s a regular day when I see him, sauntering about the campus in strange places stopping frequently for a closer look at a bush where no doubt some little thing is hidden. Over the past months I have noticed he’s captured several walking sticks, a preying mantis, a very bushy horned caterpillar, and a toad, all of which he kept on the shelf in his room. He never keeps anything too long and he’s about as good of host for his captives as they could get. Marcus has no rules. I mean he does social things that all of us have learned not to do except maybe when we’re around friends. He’ll just take caterpillar up to groups of girls in the middle of conversation just to show them what he has, like a little boy would to his mother. Many here have gotten so used to him as to expect something when he comes up. Many Eaton guys capture things for him. Yet at the same time most of us think as a person he doesn’t exist or speak to him with a pitiful tone that undermines his existence. That he is just a crazy anomaly of the environment. As if Jewell brought him here just to entertain us. I am very interested too see how his life will play out here, though sadly he may not be returning next year because of costs. I am more immediately interested to see how he fares when the winter comes and so many of his joys are gone. I hope he doesn’t go “emo” on us. Halloween was scary enough.

Finally I just want to point out that the last time I interviewed him, I somehow got him into a tizzy about communication between insects and humans and he had a thirty minute conversation with me where he played the part of a preying mantis and translated for it. He bent his wrists and made eating noises and jabbed and jumped and everything. I felt like the mantis (Marcus) was mocking me for some ignorance I’d shown because the mantis (Marcus) ranted about communication for a while and it was full of sarcastic references to my stupidity. When I asked him why he was doing this, he said “Mantis are not good at communicating orally.” If this isn’t the perfect outrageous example of Marcus, I don’t know what is.



Confronting the Inner Bug

Marcus won the scariest Halloween costume contest at the Halloween dance on Friday without even entering the contest. I was surprised that this could happen, not that it did. I guess he was a write-in candidate. All he could tell me about winning was he was confused. We know Marcus, we know. Had you seen him on Halloween you would’ve been not frightened, but kind of like whoa, I know he isn’t wearing a costume, but that crap is still scary, Tim Burton weird scary as in it’ll be strange when you watch it and haunt you forever more. Basically Marcus got some make-up from somewhere, and dressed up like Marilyn Manson (though remember, he was just putting on special clothes). So now he looked like Marilyn Manson on meth (which we may or may not have seen before so double the meth effect and you’ve got it).

I had a lot of penetrating questions and I asked a good amount of them, but some of them I kept to myself for you to understand me. One thing I didn’t ask him because I thought it went too far, but I’ve mentioned a theory to a few others in my inner circle. These noises Marcus makes that I talked about earlier are what I know as “dinosaur noises.” The reason I call them that is because that’s what my friends and I called them in school. There was a really messed up kid, we knew there was something physically wrong with him but weren’t sure what, who went to school with us from 6th grade on and he made these noises. In all of our defenses, he wasn’t like Marcus. He was a little asshole street thug who liked to get in all sorts of people’s faces. So we made fun of him. Never to his face, because it isn’t right to make someone like that feel bad. But we had pokes at him from middle school and half of high school. Basically until we found out he’s a crack baby. Yup…he’s a crack baby. I’m not joking. After we all told each other and each of us had spent our time, hands in pockets, awkwardly silenced internally begging God to forgive us, we stopped and just avoided him. From then on when he’d make these noises we’d all kind of look at each other with looks of shame and pity and regret instead of snickering and making wise-ass comments. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always made fun of people, rejected friendships with people because they weren’t cool enough or annoying, or kept my desires for friendship with them secret, because friendship is a public affair. And I know I’m not the only one who does this. Everyone does it, or I think everyone would do it if they were so frickin’ cool like me. In the end though many of these people I’ve made feel terrible have turned out to have real problems. Things God blessed me with not having. Things that make them act that way (though in many cases I think they just aren’t trying). Yes. It makes me feel good about myself to put them down. And maybe I use the excuse that I’ve got messed up shit too to convince myself I’m not sinning. But all I know is that thinking about Marcus has made me remember that every now and then these terrible things I have done come back to haunt me and make me feel terrible like a never ending last laugh.

After confronting myself about this I confronted him about the dinosaur noises just to see where it would go. “Marcus, what would you say if I told you I find the noises you make annoying?” (In a hypothetical but I’m serious way). He was very OK with this. He said “OK. Then I just won’t do it on your floor.” I asked “What if I said everyone in the whole dorm hated you making those noises?” He said, “I don’t know, I won’t do it that often.” So I said “So someone could just walk up to you right now and say stop making those noises, and you would just stop?” This brought out a different more aggressive, socially aware Marcus I hadn’t seen. He got very intense and the volume of his voice rose. He told me sternly that if someone was just going to come up and be a dick to him he’d probably do it more just to piss him off. I had only heard rumors of this aggressive Marcus. Apparently he’d gotten in a fight (which makes me chuckle inside) with his roommate (another lesser weirdo who sleeps a lot. Marcus has pushed this poor kid into the tiniest corner of their room while he takes up the rest of the space with shelves of junk). Apparently the thing Marcus hates most is when people aren’t up front with him. When people just let him annoy and piss them off and they don’t tell him, only to either go say bad things about him or be mean to him without telling him the problem. I got the sense by the conversation that Marcus not only knows he is weird and causes problems, but also wants to change. That he doesn’t like being pitied or treated like an object because then when people don’t treat him like a human they don’t tell him right or wrong and so he is not molded like the rest of us have been by society around us. He hates that people avoid him, even though he’s introverted. I felt pity for him for a while and still do. His parents seem weird, or at least certainly free-spirited. I have a hunch that Marcus feels like he is so far behind socially that he has just given up. He seeks the contact of others. He wants people to critique him, he said he just doesn’t want people “…smacking him in the head.” He wouldn’t, however, admit to wanting to change later, only that he is a little self centered sometimes. And it is a mute point because regardless of the cause of his state there is still much to learn.

I decided to go back and ask Marcus some questions that I had originally told myself would be rude to ask because I knew what they were getting at, and to be honest, I didn’t want to be asked these questions myself. I decided with help from others that these weren’t all that rude and I was just being a wussy. I asked him if he would agree that he is different, and what he thought about that. I’ll give you the answer later. I asked him why he wore different clothes and seemed not to care even though other people thought x, y, and z of him. He basically said so what? He likes patches and Hawaiian shirts. I asked him if he got picked on or if he heard others talking about him. What life was like here being different, was it difficult? I was surprised by his answer. “Not for the most part. It’s pretty cool here. Nobody really bothers me. If people bother me I just stop paying attention to them.” I asked him if he dressed this way and acted like this for attention. I was convinced by his answer that he has no interest in other people’s interests. To fill in these other blanks. He doesn’t care what others think of him. He doesn’t spend much time, though he admits he spends some, thinking about what others think. I asked him how he was with the ladies, recalling the caterpillar story. He said, “Not too good,” trying to laugh it off in the process. I asked him if he wished he was better with girls. He said, “a little sometimes, but I’m pretty used to it. I guess I wish I were a little less awkward.” Then I asked him if he were lonely. He said he feels lonely sometimes (though I noted by the way his mouth started off that he was probably going to say something more than sometimes), but that when he does he just sleeps or plays video games. I asked him if he wanted or had thought about a family in the future. He said he’d stopped thinking about it because it was so far in the future that he couldn’t know what would happen so would leave it up to chance.

But I want to finish this thought up with the actual answer he gave me when I asked him what he thought about being different. I can set this up well because I was anticipating it so much that time slowed down like it would in the movies. He took a pause for thought in his normal cool way, looking down, his hands kind of messing with each other. “Oh….Well I think everyone’s a little different.”

I still think that Marcus and I are a little more than different. But there’s also enough in common here that I have to concede he’s more than just something Jewell put here for the Eaton boy’s entertainment. Sooner or later most people’ll come around to this, I think. If they don’t it either means I’m weirder than they are, or they just aren’t growing up. Our dads and upbringings sound very similar. We share some interests in movies, enough where we could happily watch one together and enjoy each other’s company. We happen to get along well. He likes Obama. He is concerned about nuclear proliferation and the CTBT (I’d explain, but does it matter?). He likes the outdoors and has seen some cool stuff that interests me. He hates shaving. I hate shaving. He likes the ladies. I like the ladies. And I’m sure there’s a lot more. There is plenty here for anyone to share some time with Marcus if they feel the need. I hope anyone who reads this finds something they can start with. Like I said early on, it’s not like we should pity Marcus, I’m saying just the opposite. There is no reason to pity Marcus, and thus none of us should be afraid to spend a little extra time with him. Don’t do it if you don’t want to. I’m just telling my story and part of his and saying I think I’ve gained a friend here. I really do. For the past week or so since our conversation about dinosaur noises, he’s been sneakily greeting me with those noises. I know it’s him when he does it. I can turn (because he’s never in front of me) and see him smiling. He even knows MY name now and he says it when he says “hello” (he doesn’t differ in his greeting. It’s always “Hello Will” like Ernie from Sesame Street might say it). But it isn’t Ernie and it’s not Safari Man. It’s Marcus.